Revolutionary Organization

1961

The term "rethinking" is often used as an excuse for not thinking
at all. One hesitates to use it. Much rethinking has nevertheless to be done by
revolutionary socialists. A cursory glance at the Labour movement in Western
Europe today should convince anyone of this dire need. More and more ordinary
people show an indifference bordering on contempt for the mass Labour and
Communist Parties of yesterday. The old men of the "left" attempt to resolve
this crisis by repeating in ever more strident tone the dogmas and concepts that
were good enough for their own grandads.

We here wish to examine one of the most fervently adhered to
dogmas of the "Left": the need for a tightly centralized socialist party,
controlled by a carefully selected leadership. The Labour Party describes this
type of organization as an essential feature of British democracy in practice.
The Bolsheviks describe it as a "democratic centralism". Let us forget the names
and look below the surface. In both cases we find the complete domination of the
party in all matters of organization and policy by a fairly small group of
professional "leaders".

As none of these parties has ever been successful in achieving a
society where the great mass of people control and manage their own destinies,
both their politics and their organizational methods must be considered suspect.
It is our opinion that the type of organization required to assist the working
class in its struggle for socialism is certainly a matter for serious thought.

Post-war capitalism has certainly provided more jobs and better
paid ones than many may have thought possible. But its drive to subordinate
people to the process of production has intensified at an enormous rate. At
work, people are reduced more and more to the role of button-pushing
lever-pressing machines. In the "ideal" capitalist factory human beings would
perform only the most simple, routine tasks. The division of labour would be
carried to its extreme. Managers would decide. Foremen would supervise. The
workers only comply.

In the body politic, omnipotent social institutions similarly
decide all issues: how much production will be "allowed" to increase or
decrease, how much consumption, what kind of consumption, how many H-bombs to
produce, whether to have Polaris bases or not, etc., etc. Between those who rule
and those who labour there exists a wide and unbridgeable gulf.

Exploiting society consciously encourages the development of a
mass psychology to the effect that the ideas or wishes of ordinary people are
unimportant and that all important decisions must be taken by people specially
trained and specially equipped to do so. They are encouraged to believe that
success, security, call it what you will, can only be achieved within the
framework of the accepted institutions. The rebel, the militant, the iconoclast
may be admired, even envied, but their example must be shunned. After all no one
can really challenge the powers that be. Just look at what happens to those who
try!

Ironically enough the very organizations that have set themselves
up as the liberators of the working class and the champions of their cause have
become facsimile replicas of the very society they are supposedly challenging.
The Labour Party, the Communist Party and the various Trotskyite and Leninist
sects all extol the virtues of professional politicians or revolutionaries. All
practice a rigid division within their own organizations of leaders and led. All
fundamentally believe that socialism will be instituted from above and through
their own particular agency.

Each of them sees socialism as nothing more than the conquest of
political power, and the transformation, by decree, of economic institutions.
The instruments of socialism, in their eyes, are nationalization, state control
and the "plan". The objective of socialism is to increase both productivity and
consumption. The elimination of economic anarchy and the full development of the
productive forces are somehow equated with the millennium.

Labour's nationalized industries are proof of the attitude of the
Social Democrats. The Bolsheviks would replace the Robertsons and Robens with
people loyal to the Party. The Soviet experience makes this quite clear. As
early as 1918 Lenin had stated "the Revolution demands, in the interests of
socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the
leaders of the labour process".[1]
By 1921 he was saying: "It is absolutely essential that all authority in the
factories should be concentrated in the hands of management ... under these
circumstances all direct interference by the trade unions in the management of
factories must be regarded positively harmful and impermissible."[2]

Trotsky wanted to militarize the trade unions. Is it very far
from this to the statement, issued by Stalin's Central Committee in September
1929, that "Soviet Union Communists must help to establish order and discipline
in the factory. Members of the Communist Party, union representatives and shop
committees are instructed not to interfere in questions of management".[3]

None of them argued for the working people themselves managing
and organizing industry and the affairs of society, now. That was a carrot to be
nibbled in a distant future.

This conception of socialism spawns the bureaucratic parties that
today constitute the traditional political organizations of the "left". To all
of them the determination and application of policies are a matter for experts.
Gaitskell scorns the Scarborough decisions because they were made by people whom
he considers to be intellectually incapable of comprehending matters of
international importance. The Communist Party and the Socialist Labour League
oppose British H-bombs but support Russian ones. Their leaders consider the
millions of people who want to end all H-bombs as being sentimental and
uninformed. They have obviously not read the appropriate volumes that would
"clarify" them and make them see how essential Russian bombs really are.

The businessmen insist on the importance of their managerial
rights. So do the leaders of the political organizations of the "Left". This
rigid control from above creates not efficiency but the very reverse. Whenever
decisions are taken at higher levels and simply transmitted to the lower orders
for execution a conspiracy against both leaders and orders arises. In the
factory the workers devise their own methods of solving work problems. If bonus
can be made in five hours well and good. Work is skilfully spread over
eight-and-a-half hours. Supervisors lie to departmental managers. These, in
turn, lie to works' managers, who lie to the directors and shareholders. Each
seeks to preserve his own niche. Each seeks to hide wastage, error, and
inefficiency. In the hierarchical organization of the modern factory where work
is not a matter for common decision and responsibility, and where relations are
based on mistrust and suspicion, the best "plan" can never be fulfilled in life.

This is repeated in the political parties. Officials have an
existence to justify. Members who are nothing more than contributors to party
funds, and sellers of party literature are regularly called to order to explain
how many papers they have sold and how many contacts they have visited with
their leader's latest line. Those who attempt to discuss reality or to think for
themselves are denounced as either "sectarians" or "opportunists" or just
"politically immature". The factory managers never really know what is happening
in their factories. The political "leaders" really don't know either what is
taking place in their own organizations. Only the leaders, for instance, believe
the membership figures issued.

Bolsheviks argue that to fight the highly centralized forces of
modern capitalism requires an equally centralized type of party. This ignores
the fact that capitalist centralization is based on coercion and force and the
exclusion of the overwhelming majority of the population from participating in
any of its decisions. The most highly specialized and centralized bodies under
capitalism are its means of enforcing its rule - its military and its police.
Because of their bureaucratic centralism these organizations produce a special
breed of animal noted for its insensitiveness, brutality and other moronic
qualities.

The very structure of these organizations ensures that their
personnel do not think for themselves, but unquestionably carry out the
instructions of their superiors. Trotsky, as far back as 1903, believed that the
Marxist movement should have a similar structure. He told the Brussels
Conference that the statutes of the revolutionary organization should express
"the leadership's organized distrust of the members, a distrust manifesting
itself in vigilant control from above over the Party".[4]

Advocates of "democratic centralism" insist that it is the only
type of organization which can function effectively under conditions of
illegality. This is nonsense. The "democratic centralist' organization is
particularly vulnerable to police persecution. When all power is concentrated in
the hands of the leaders, their arrest immediately paralyses the whole
organization. Members trained to accept unquestioningly the instruction of an
all-wise Central Committee will find it very difficult or impossible to think
and act for themselves. The experiences of the German Communist Party confirm
this. With their usual inconsistency, the Trotskyists even explain the demise of
their Western European sections during World War II by telling people how their
leaders were murdered by the Gestapo!

The overthrow of exploiting society is not a military operation
to be planned by a secretariat of amateur generals, armed with a library of
Marxist textbooks and an outdated military manual. A social revolution can only
take place providing the working class itself is conscious of the need to change
society and is prepared to struggle. Its success is dependent on the
disintegration of the capitalist institutions more than on their military
overthrow. Unless whole sections of the military can either be won over or
neutralized, then the taking of power is impossible.

Because of their basically reactionary ideas and methods of
organization neither social democracy nor Bolshevism are able to understand or
express the real needs of people. The dynamic of any socialist movement is the
desire of people to change the conditions of their lives. The Hungarian
Revolution was more than a struggle for an extra ten bob a week. It was not a
struggle for an extension of nationalization or for more "efficiency" in
Government departments. Millions of Hungarian people rose against their
oppressors because they wanted to determine the conditions of their own
lives and to manage their own affairs. For a brief, heroic period they replaced
the society of rulers and ruled with direct democracy, where every
representative was not only elected by direct vote but was revocable at any
time. The ideas of committees appointed from above and of "panels' commissions"
would have been quite alien to them. Surely political tendencies whose
organizational methods are the very antithesis of what the working class has
demonstrated, in practice, that it wants, should re-examine all their ideas and
previously held theories.

All the ruling groups in modern society encourage the belief that
decision taking and management are functions beyond the comprehension of
ordinary people. All means are used to foster this idea. Not only do formal
education, the press, the radio, television and the church perpetuate this myth,
but even the parties of the so-called opposition accept it and, in so doing,
lend it strength. All the political parties of the "left" - whether social
democratic or Bolshevik - oppose the present order only by offering "better"
leaders, more "experienced" and more capable of solving the problems of society
than those who mismanage the world today.

All of them, bourgeois and "radicals" alike, distort the history
of the working class and attempt to draw a discreet veil over the immense
creative initiative of the masses in struggle. For the bourgeois, the Russian
revolution was the conspiracy of organized fanaticism. To Stalinists and
Trotskyists, it is the justification for their right to lead. For the bourgeois,
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 showed how capitalist rulers were better than
Stalinist ones. For the Stalinists, it was a fascist conspiracy. The Trotskyists
wrote pamphlets showing how badly the Hungarians needed their own services. Over
every revolution and struggle the parties compete in the squalid business of
seeking to justify both themselves and their dogmas. They all ignore the
efforts, the struggles, the sacrifices and the positive achievements of the
participants themselves. Every attempt by people to take control of their own
destiny by instituting their own rule has been buried beneath a million official
tracts and a welter of "expert" interpretations.

It is now almost impossible to learn what actually happened in
Italy during the early 1920s when the workers occupied and managed the
factories. The Asturian Commune of 1934, the May Days in Barcelona in 1937, the
sit-down strikes in France and the U.S.A. during the late thirties and the
events of Budapest in 1956 have become closed books.

If the myth that people are unable to manage, organize and rule
society themselves is to be debunked, workers must be made aware that on several
occasions other workers have in fact managed society. They have done so both
more humanely and more effectively than it is managed at present. To us who
publish Agitator there can be no thought of socialism unless the working
class establishes its own rule. Socialism for us implies the complete and total
management of both production and government. The essential precondition for
this is a rise in mass consciousness and the development of a confidence within
people that they are able not only to challenge the old society but build the
new one.

Making these past experiences available to people is one of the
primary tasks of revolutionary socialists. All channels of information are in
the hands of capitalists, bureaucrats, or self-appointed saviours with special
axes to grind. We disagree with those who argue that there is no need for a
revolutionary organization. The production of a truthful and a serious history
requires the conscious and organized association of revolutionary socialists.

The revolutionary organization must also bring to workers' notice
the common interests that they share with other workers.

On the one hand the concentration of capital has led to an
increasing concentration of workers in giant factories often linked with one
another in various kinds of monopolies. On the other hand the new productive
techniques have led to greater division between the producers. The labour
process has been so broken down that workers are not only separated by national,
regional and sectional boundaries, but also by artificial divisions within
factories and departments. The increasing tempo of production and introduction
of piecework has fostered the idea that the interests of workers in one section
are quite different from those of men in other sections.

The trade union officials help the employers to maintain these
divisions. Separate and often widely differing wage and piece-rates are
negotiated. Workers in one factory or shop are pitted against workers in other
factories and shops. The employers and the union officials unscrupulously use
the men's short-term interests - or apparent short-term interests - to sabotage
their real needs. The very presence of different unions competing against one
another for members illustrates how sectional interests are promoted above
general requirements. Clerical workers are today being reduced to mere cogs in
the impersonal machine of production. The increase in union membership among
these workers shows that they are becoming aware of this fact. The union
bureaucracies organize them into separate unions for white-collar workers, or
into special sections of the industrial unions.

The revolutionary organization must help break down the false
divisions between workers. With its paper and publications and through its
militants the revolutionary organization should bring to people's notice the
struggles that are taking place in society. It must truthfully report what these
struggles are about and show how they affect the lives and interests of other
workers.

Most people do not at present see the need for socialism. If by
socialism is meant what currently passes as such - both East and West of the
Iron Curtain - we can scarcely blame them. There is no doubt, however, that vast
numbers of people are prepared to struggle on real issues, on issues that really
concern them, and against the innumerable and monstrous social injustices and
social frustrations of contemporary society. At an elementary level, they are
prepared to fight against rent increases, against changes in piecework rates and
against changes in job organization about which they have not even been
consulted. At a higher level, they are prepared to campaign against the
production of nuclear weapons. They are constantly challenging the various
"solutions" to these problems, imposed upon them from above. How can this
challenge be generalized? How can it be transformed into one directed against
the very society which perpetuates the division of men into order-givers and
order-takers?

The revolutionary organization must assist people engaged in a
struggle against exploiting society to understand the need to act in an
organized class way and not as isolated groups with limited or sectional
objectives.

***

Is the socialist society a Utopian dream? The answer depends on
how one sees the development of socialist consciousness. The Bolsheviks -
Stalinists and Trotskyists - both endorse Lenin's statement: 'The history of all
countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able
to develop only trade union consciousness."[5]

The adherents to this theory, quite logically, consider it the
job of professional revolutionaries to plan the strategy, organize
the taking of power and take all the decisions for the instituting of the
"socialist" society. Lenin, the firmest advocate of this reformist and
reactionary idea which was borrowed from Kautsky[6]
went so far as to applaud the Webbs' ironical and scornful comments about the
attempts of the British workers to manage their own trade unions.[7]

We completely reject this idea. First, because it attempts to
impose upon workers a relationship to "their" leadership which is a replica of
the relation already existing under capitalism. The effect would only be to
create apathy and the alienation of the masses - conditions which powerfully
assist the growth of decision-taking groups, which rapidly assume increasing
managerial functions and which however "well-intentioned" originally, rapidly
start settling matters in their own interests and become exploiting groups and
bureaucracies.

We believe that people in struggle do draw conclusions
which are fundamentally socialist in content. Industrial disputes, particularly
in Britain, frequently take on the character of a challenge to managerial
rights. Workers constantly dispute the bosses' right to hire and fire. Strikes
regularly take place over employers' attempts to reorganize and "rationalize"
production. In these workers counterpoise their own conceptions and ideas of how
production should be organized to those of the employers. Such disputes not only
undermine the whole authoritarian, hierarchical structure of capitalist
relations, they also show quite clearly that people are repeatedly seeing the
need to organize production - which is the basis of all social life - as they
think best.

During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 the Workers' Councils
demanded drastic reductions in wage differentials, called for the abolition of
piecework and introduced workers' management of industry. These organizations of
political and industrial rule - far more important than the Nagy government -
were based on elected and immediately revocable delegates.

The Hungarian Revolution followed the tradition first established
by the Commune of 1871. But the aims of the Hungarian workers went further than
those of any previous revolution. In the anti-bureaucratic nature of their
demands the Hungarian workers showed that they were fighting for something which
will become the fundamental feature of all workers' struggles in this epoch.
Such a programme is far more revolutionary and more profoundly socialist in
character than anything advocated by any of today's so-called socialist parties.

The Social Democrats and Bolsheviks look either to war or
economic misery as means of converting to socialism. It is primitive and
insulting to believe that people are unable to oppose exploiting society unless
their bellies are empty or their heads about to be blown off.

That this is untrue is shown by the innumerable disputes which
take place in the motor industry. Car workers - despite their relatively high
wages - fight back against employers' attempts to establish an ever more rigid
control over workshop conditions. Often employers are prepared to pay more money
if workers will give up their hard-won rights in the workshops. Workers often
reject this bribery.

Capitalist and bureaucratic societies both seek to subordinate
the great majority to the needs of their ruling groups. The rulers attempt to
impress the stamp of obedience and conformity on to every aspect of social life.
Initiative, intellectual independence, creativeness are crushed and despised.
Unless man can develop to the full these - his most precious qualities - he
lives but half a life. Men want to be something more than well-fed servants. The
desire to be free is not a pious liberal phrase, but the most noble of man's
desires. The pre-condition of this freedom is, of course, freedom in the field
of production - workers' management. There can be no real freedom and no real
future for humanity in an exploiting society. The path to freedom lies through
the socialist revolution.

The resentment of people today against the stifling and degrading
relations imposed upon them by class society provides the strongest driving
force towards the socialist future.

What type of organization is needed in the struggle for
socialism? How can the fragmented struggles of isolated groups of workers, of
tenants, of people opposed to nuclear war be co-ordinated? How can a mass
socialist consciousness be developed?

In parts 1 and 2 we were quite emphatic about what we didn't
want. We looked at all the traditional organizations and found both in their
doctrine and in their structure mirror images of the very society they were
allegedly fighting to overthrow. We would like now to develop some of our
conceptions of what is needed.

Our suggestions are not blueprints. Nor are they intended as the
ultimate and final word on the matter. The methods of struggle decided by the
working class will to a large extent mould the revolutionary organization - that
is, provided the organization sees itself as the instrument of these struggles
and not as a self-appointed "leadership". "Elitist" conceptions lead to a
self-imposed isolation. Future events may show us the need to modify or even
radically alter many of our present conceptions. This does not worry us in the
least. There is nothing more revolutionary than reality, nothing more
reactionary than an erstwhile revolutionary idea promoted to the rank of
absolute and permanent truth.

Exploiting society constantly seeks to coerce people into obeying
its will. It denies them the right to manage their own lives, to decide their
own destinies. It seeks to create obedient conformists. The real challenge of
socialism is that it will give to men the right to be masters of their fate.

It seems quite obvious to us that the socialist organization must
be managed by its members. Unless it can ensure that they work together
in a spirit of free association and that their activity is genuinely collective
it will be useless. It will appear to people as no different from any other
organization or institution of capitalism, with its rigid division into
order-givers and order-takers.

Without democracy the revolutionary organization will be unable
to develop the required originality of thought and the vital initiative and
determination to fight upon which its very existence depends. The Bolshevik
method of self-appointed and self-perpetuating leaders, selected because of
their ability to "interpret" the teachers' writings and "relate them to today's
events" ensures that no one ever intrudes with an original idea. History becomes
a series of interesting analogies. Thought becomes superfluous. All the
revolutionaries need is a good memory and well-stocked library. No wonder the
"revolutionary" left is today so sterile.

Struggle demands more than a knowledge of history. It demands of
its participants an understanding of today's reality. During strikes, workers
have to discuss in a free and uninhibited way how best to win. Unless this is
made possible the ability and talent of the strikers is wasted. The loyalty and
determination that strikers display - often referred to by the press as
stubbornness or ignorance - derives from the knowledge that they have
participated in the decisions. They have a feeling of identification with their
strike and with its organization. This is in marked contrast to their general
position in society where what they think and do is considered quite unimportant

During strikes, representatives of the various political groups
gain control of the Committee. Demands entirely unrelated to the dispute then
make their appearance. The outcome is inevitable. A lack of interest, a
diminution of activity, sometimes even a vote to return to work. The feeling of
identification disappears and is replaced by a feeling of being used.

When the direct management of an organization by its members is
replaced by an alien control from above, vitality is lost, the will to struggle
lessens. Many will ask what do we mean by "direct management"? We mean that the
organization should be based upon branches or groups, each of which has the
fullest autonomy, to decide its own activities, that is in keeping with the
general purpose of the organization. When possible decisions should be
collective ones. Branches should elect delegates to any committees
considered necessary for the day-to-day functioning of the organization. Such
delegates are not elected for three years, for twelve months ... or even twelve
days. They are, revocable, at any time their fellow members
consider it necessary. This is the only way that the membership can effectively
ensure that their representatives carry out their jobs properly. We lay no
claims to originality in proposing this. In every revolution, during most
strikes and daily at the level of workshop organization the working class
resorts to this type of direct democracy.

It is rather amusing to hear Bolsheviks argue that this may be
all right for everybody else - but not for themselves. Apparently the same
workers who are expected to have determination and consciousness sufficient to
overthrow capitalism and to build a new society do not possess sufficient
know-how to put the right man in the right place in their own organization.

The same arguments against direct democracy repeatedly raise
their bald heads! We are reminded that you cannot have a mass meeting to discuss
every single issue - true, but not very profound. Of course certain committees
are needed. They must however be directly responsible to the membership, and
their duties must be clearly defined. They must be charged with placing all
the facts of any matter under discussion before all the members. The withholding
of essential information from members is a powerful factor reinforcing the
division between leaders and led. It lays the basis for bureaucracy within the
organization. Genuine democracy does not only imply an equality of rights ... it
implies the fullest possible dissemination of information, allowing the rational
use of those rights.

We reject the idea that matters of great importance require split
second decisions by a central committee, with "years of experience" to its
credit, meeting in a secret conclave. If the social conflict is so intense as to
require drastic action, the need for such action will certainly have become
apparent to many workers. The organization will at best be the expression of
that collective will. A million correct decisions are quite useless unless they
are understood and accepted by those involved. People cannot fight
blindly in such situations, their unthinking actions projected by a group of
revolutionary theoreticians - if they do the results are liable to be dangerous.

When important decisions have to be taken they must be placed
before the members for approval or otherwise. Without this there can be no
understanding of what is involved. And without understanding there can be no
conviction, and no genuinely effective action. There will only be the usual
frantic appeals to "discipline". And as Zinoviev once put it: "discipline begins
where conviction ends".

Our critics will ask us about differences of opinion within the
organization. Should not the majority decisions be binding on all? The
alternative, we are informed, is ineffectiveness. Again there are precedents to
which we may refer: the real experiences of workers in struggle. During strikes
and even more so during revolutions, big issues are at stake. Fundamental
decisions have to be taken. In these circumstances the members will
automatically expect of each other full and active participation. Those who do
not give it will cut themselves off from the movement, will have no desire to
remain members. It is quite another matter, however, to insist on the absolute
acceptance of a party line on matters not calling for immediate decision and
action. Those who wish an organization to be run on these lines have clearly
assigned to themselves a divine right of interpretation. Only they know what is
"correct", what is "in the best interest of the movement'.

This attitude is very widespread and is an important factor in
the utter fragmentation of the revolutionary left today. Various sects, each
claiming to be the elite, the one-and-only "genuine" Marxist group, fight
furiously with one another, each quite certain that the fate of the working
class, and of humanity at large, is tied up with "finding the correct solution"
to each and every doctrinal squabble. Faction fights and the "elite" conception
of the Party (the "brain" of the working class) are but different sides of the
same coin. This conception profoundly underestimates the creative abilities of
the working class. No wonder they reject this type of organization ... and this
type of politics.

What should the activity of the revolutionary organization be?
Whilst rejecting the substitutionism of both reformism and Bolshevism, we also
reject the essentially propagandist approach of organizations such as the
Socialist Party of Great Britain. We consider it important to bring to workers
information and reports of the struggles of other workers - both past and
present - reports which emphasize the fact that workers are capable of
struggling collectively and of rising to the greatest heights of revolutionary
consciousness. The revolutionary press must help break down the conspiracy of
silence about such struggles. It must bring to the working class the story of
its own past and the details of its present struggles. But it must do more than
merely disseminate information. When strikes occur, when tenants oppose rent
increases, when thousands protest against the threat of nuclear war, we feel it
our responsibility to provide the maximum support and assistance. The
revolutionary organization or its members should actively participate in these
movements, not with the idea of "gaining control" or "winning them over" to a
particular line - but with the more honest objective of helping people in
struggle to win.

This does not absolve conscious revolutionaries from arguing for
their own ideas or from the need to try and convince people of the wider
implications of their struggles. We do not "bow to spontaneity".[8]
We believe we have something positive to say but also that we must earn our
right to say it. The revolutionary organization must see its job as serving the
working class, not leading it, helping co-ordinate its struggles, not imposing
methods of struggle upon it, learning from the struggles that are taking place,
not ramming its learning down the throat of others. It must realize that
correct as its ideas may be, they are dependent on workers agreeing with them.

[5] V. I. Lenin, What Is To
Be Done? (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1944), p. 33.

[6] In Neue Zeit, 1901
-1902, XX, No.3, p. 79, Kautsky wrote: "... socialist consciousness is
represented as a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle.
This is absolutely untrue ... Modem socialist consciousness can arise only on
the basis of profound scientific knowledge ... the vehicles of science are not
the proletariat but the bourgeois intelligentsia ..." Lenin, in What Is To Be
Done? (p. 40), quotes Kautsky in full and refers to his views as "profoundly
true and important utterances".

[7] Lenin wrote (ibid. p.
125): "In Mr. and Mrs. Webb's book on trade unionism, there is an interesting
chapter entitled 'Primitive Democracy'. In this chapter, the authors relate how,
in the first period of existence of their unions, the British workers thought it
was an indispensable sign of democracy for all the members to do all the work of
managing the unions; not only were all questions decided by the votes of all the
members but all the official duties were fulfilled by all the members in turn. A
long period of historical experience was required to teach these workers how
absurd such a conception of democracy was and to make them understand the
necessity for representative institutions on the one hand, and for full-time
professional officials on the other".

[8] Most discussions on this
theme are quite meaningless. All mass struggles have both immediate and remote
causes and all are influenced to a greater or less degree by the experiences of
previous struggles.